


leave it all behind, and there is happiness

by I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Jacob Black deserves better, POV Jacob Black, and i would like emotional compensation, and imprinting is bullshit, every time i write one of these fics i have to reread breaking dawn, so here we go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29046903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames/pseuds/I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames
Summary: Jacob Black looks at the daughter of the girl he loved, and the center of his universe starts to shift—and he plants his feet and says no.
Kudos: 12





	leave it all behind, and there is happiness

_Everything inside me came undone as I stared at the tiny porcelain face of the half-vampire, half-human baby. All the lines that held me to my life were sliced apart in_ _swift cuts, like clipping the strings to a bunch of balloons. Everything that made me_ _who I was—my love for the dead girl upstairs, my love for my father, my loyalty to my_ _new pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my_ _name, my self—disconnected from me in that second—snip, snip, snip—and—_

And—

And I didn't let go.

I clenched my fists around every last one of those goddamn strings, so tight I could feel the phantom pain of it burning my knuckles, my broken fingers, every straining muscle. I held on with everything I had. Clung to—

Bella. Bella, smiling, small and bright and blinding. Bella's hand, warm in mine, Bella's arms tight around me and she's breathing shaky like she's gonna cry but she's _there_ and that's all that matters, Bella's voice saying something ridiculous about engines as she hands me a piece of lukewarm pizza over the gutted motorcycle, and she _knows_ it's ridiculous, laughing as she says it, Bella running careful fingers over a charm I carved for hours and she's quiet but I can read the happiness in it—

Bella, dying, and my careless hands on her heart not enough to keep it beating, my breath not enough for her lungs—

I loved her. I loved her as hard as I knew how, and now I'm drowning in how much, but _I don't want to let go_ , dammit. I chose this. I knew exactly how much it would hurt, looked out at the darkness that was coming, and instead of walking away, cutting ties when I could, I _fought_. I held on to her, to that slim wild chance for as long as I could and I'm not fucking letting go now just because it could stop the pain—

I'd rather hurt and still get to care than feel like I never cared at all.

 _Don't let go_.

Dad hugged me through Mom's entire funeral and he didn't let go, not once. Not even when I was crying into his side too hard to breathe right, smearing snot all over his shirt—he just held me tight and let me keep my eyes closed, let me shake, because he could hold me up. The first time I was a wolf, furious and panicking and voices I barely knew were clamoring in my head, he just wheeled closer and put his hand on my side. I was shaking and howling and I thought I would tear him apart, and Sam thought it too, was telling me to back up, but I couldn't move—and he just _stayed_ , until I remembered how to be human again. Until his hand was on my shoulder instead of on fur, tight and steady and holding me to myself.

And suddenly that snapping string was his hand. Warm and rough and trembling just the slightest bit, clamped tight around my shoulder and _I'm not letting go_ —

 _what if we ran away_ , Bella's voice begged in the back of my mind, _just you and me_ —I was picturing the roar and rumble of her truck, but hearing Sam's voice, too. Rumbling about responsibilities and pride and the duties that come with having a gift—and Embry bugging his eyes out at me behind Sam's back, mouthing _he think's he's Spiderman_ , and I'm wondering how to communicate that it was Spiderman's _uncle_ who said that, idiot, without Sam realizing that Embry's making fun of him back there—and I chose that. I chose to stay and fight—

And there was happiness there. There was Emily's warm, bright kitchen, music playing softly and cinnamon rolls, Jared trying to dunk one in coffee and instead just splashing the contents of his entire mug over the table, Emily hitting him on the back of the head with the roll of paper towels, there was Paul rattling cheerfully into my house with taunts and a bag full of groceries because I'd been running too many patrols to go shopping that week, there was Quil shifting for the first time, thinking _holy shitfucking mother_ and Embry gleefully projecting _that's not a real curse, dumbass_ just to hear him yelp and _I chose them_ , over and over again when all I wanted was to run, and it was good, even though it broke—I chose right—

 _Imprinting is just another way of getting your choices taken away from you_ , I told Leah. She said she'd rather be any kind of happy—and she was _wrong_ , I realized so suddenly I was almost dizzy. In every way that mattered, _she was wrong_ —because whatever happy was waiting at the end of this wasn't worth it. Wasn't worth everything else about me falling away—and Leah would think so too, if she ever felt this moment of unraveling. I could see it, could see her—crossing her arms, rolling her eyes, making that stupid pissed-off face where she squints a little and grits her teeth, because Leah is angry and bitter but fiercely, determinedly herself, even when the thoughts of everyone around her are practically _begging_ her not to be.

 _I want to be myself_ —

I wanted my home, my world, my self the way it was, even though it hurt—especially because it hurt. Because if the pain could just _stop_ , just like that, what was the fucking point of any of it in the first place?

My dad used to tie balloons around our wrists, so we couldn't lose them. We'd run around the fairgrounds with those white ribbons rubbing tight on our wrists, Rebecca and Rachel and me, watching them bounce and sway between us and the sky. Rebecca would twist the entire string around and around her arm so she could hold the end of the balloon and bounce it off my head, her and Rachel giggling at every thunk—

And now I was grabbing at all the cut strands of _me—_ swaying as I reached, like standing on Dad's shoulders when I was younger, straining for the tail of a kite stuck in a tree—and I held as tight as I could to their fraying ends. Twisted them around and around myself until they dug in so deep it hurt, pulling knots harder than Dad's careful hands ever would. I had a choice. I had to.

 _Then choose to just let go,_ something whispered. I could feel it pushing—the million other strings that were waiting for me to grab. It would be so easy. So smooth they wouldn't even hurt—silk bands, instead of the harsh, knotted pieces I was clinging to.

I could let it all go, everything I had now and everything that was looming, ready to crash down and smash that all to bits. The grief for Bella, the fight that was coming if I kept defending her from the treaty she'd thought she had to break, the empty life I'd have to learn how to live when it was over—I could choose right now to slide into something else. Something simple—a life where I'd never have to make a hard choice again...

And that wasn't any sort of choice at all.

"I was not born to follow you," I whispered—remembering how it had felt to say those words to Sam, the power and the weightlessness, even through my sorrow. There was none of that now—there were a million weights at the end of these strings, dragging me straight down into the pain that had been waiting for me so long. I was hollow and aching, shaking like I'd run for months, like I was falling apart at the seams, every tiny injury hurting so badly that, for a moment, it felt like I was nothing more than human.

But I was looking at a tiny, eerily-perfect face, with brown eyes just like Bella's cracking open—and I felt nothing as I turned away.

**Author's Note:**

> imprinting is garbage, and jacob knows its garbage, and he deserves so much better than what he got.   
> i...might write more of this, because i'm actually really intrigued by where the story would go from here, so...stay tuned?


End file.
